TripIt for iPhone’s Bêtes Noires

There are three things about TripIt’s iPhone app that we’ve always hated. And it’s likely you’ve hated them too.

Allow me to vent for a moment.

It drives me nuts that I can’t edit my plans from the phone. It’s a hassle when my plans change at the airport and I can’t update myTripIt app with my new flight info (and then I keep getting timely, awesome TripIt Pro alerts about my now irrelevant old flight info). Ugh. Yes, TripIt’s magic is converting your travel confirmation emails to itineraries through plans@tripit.com or Auto Import, but who are we to tell you what you can and can’t do after that?

Second, when TripIt’s itinerator detects conflicting plan information (like when my airline tweaks my flight’s schedule, emails me about it and it gets picked up by Auto Import), it dutifully shows the conflicting plans in TripIt’s iPhone app. (Which flight info is correct!? Gahh!) To resolve the conflict, I have to go to a Web browser. Fail.

Third, I hate the way I have to sign in to TripIt for iPhone. I go from the app, to m.tripit.com in Safari and then back to the app: it’s a pain. If I fat-finger my password, it gets ugly, quick.

Well, with iPhone 2.4 we let our haters be our motivators (even when the haters are in our own office!). With this new update — which you should get now in the App Store — you can edit your plans in the app, pick the right flight among updates in the app, and there’s a shiny new sign in experience that doesn’t bounce you to the Web or do anything weird. It all just works. There is still a long list of things that we think can be a lot better about our app, but this new version is a big deal and, I think, makes life a lot better.

Thank you to all of you who are using TripIt and sharing your feedback with us. It makes all the time we spend building TripIt worthwhile.